06.22.09

What’s it like, following a baseball club whose home field advantage is routinely compromised by hordes of exiles and traveling fans bellowing their support for the visiting side? That’s the situation Deep Left Field‘s Sam Hutcheson finds himself in, advising his fellow Braves rooters to avoid Turner Field for tonight’s clash with Chicago (” If there’s any slug of baseball fandom that will appear for a Monday rain-out replay and make the park a miserable hell of drunken buffoonery, rest assured, it is Cubs fans”). And’s he’s only just getting started (link courtesy Repoz and Baseball Think Factory)

We follow that septic sludge with Bud Selig’s most joyous fuck you to Atlanta fans, our yearly parade of soul-grindingly annoying fans from the NEC. Three games of transplanted Yankee fans soiling the seats of our fair grounds, followed immediately by an equal dose of their paternal twins from Boston. Oh, joyous day. How can we, the unworthy denizens of Atlanta ever thank you Mr. Selig? If not for your ever-brilliant notion of making the World Series essentially meaningless by playing the leagues against one another in the middle of the summer we’d never have the chance to see all of the loud, obnoxious sprawl-eating invaders gathered together in one place like this! You’re the best.

I hate interleague play. I hate people who think a baseball stadium full of families is the proper place to get drunk and moan “Yoooouuuuuuk” like a water buffalo in heat. I hate anyone who thinks Derek Jeter deserves anything more than a good garroting. All of which pales as shadow compared to the burning summer sun that is my hatred for the man who unleashed this unholy calvacade upon us.